Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that the government wanted to introduce military training for all adult males and that his country would seek to explore how it could be protected by nuclear weapons.
“We are preparing large-scale military training for every adult man in Poland. Our goal is to finalise the plan by year’s end to ensure a well-trained reserve force ready for potential threats,” he said.
He added, though, that his government was not planning to bring back conscription.
Tusk, addressing the Polish parliament on March 7, justified the planned moves alluding to fears that Poland would be in danger if Russia took control of Ukraine.
“If Ukraine loses the war, or if it accepts the terms of peace, armistice, or capitulation in such a way that weakens its sovereignty and makes it easier for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to gain control over Ukraine then, without a doubt, Poland will find itself in a much more difficult geopolitical situation,” he said.
Regarding nuclear and unconventional weapons, Tusk said he had requested the defence ministry to initiate Poland’s withdrawal from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty aimed at eliminating anti-personnel landmines around the world.
He added that the government was exploring ways in which Poland could be covered by French nuclear deterrence.
“Today, it is clear that we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal,” he argued and pointed to the fact that Ukraine had given up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s, making it vulnerable to attack by Russia, according to Tusk.
He also, mistakenly, said Poland would consider withdrawing from the Dublin Convention on cluster munitions. His country, in fact, has not signed that agreement and later his aide Jan Grabiec explained that the Prime Minister had meant that Poland would not feel limited by that international agreement.
There was also some confusion over whether military training would be compulsory and whether women would be included, at least on a voluntary basis.
Tusk erroneously stated that in Switzerland such training was voluntary whereas, in fact, it is mandatory there but with the option of community service instead of military training.
There is also a system for refresher training nine years after the initial version.
While Tusk urged action from Europe with regard to rearmament, he once again ruled out Poland sending troops to Ukraine to participate in any eventual peace mission.
“Everyone in the EU, the US and Ukraine understands that Poland’s primary role is to bolster its border with Russia, not sending troops to Ukraine,” he claimed
He added that the key to resisting Russia was European unity because Europe’s far larger population and better quality weapons meant “Russia will be helpless against a unified Europe”.
Also on March 7, the opposition Conservatives (PiS)-aligned Polish President Andrzej Duda submitted to parliament an amendment to the Constitution that would oblige the country to spend at least 4 per cent of GDP a year on defence.
A day earlier at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Duda requested that NATO set a minimum target for defence spending by members of 3 per cent of GDP at its upcoming summer summit in the Netherlands.
That came in the wake of US President Donald Trump expressing doubts about defending NATO allies that failed to meet defence spending goals. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier on March 6 that “if they don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them”.
Opposition PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński supported Tusk and Duda’s views, saying it was “good that Donald Tusk is talking differently to the way he used to”, but added: “Actions will speak louder than words.”
In a post on X on March 7, Kaczyński said there was a need to take into account the fact that Tusk and his party had in the past supported then-US president Barack Obama’s “reset” with Russia and, during the Polish PM’s last spell in government, had actually cut defence spending.
Kaczyński argued that the problem with Tusk’s party, the Civic Coalition (KO), was that it “often says one thing and then does another”. He claimed that while the party’s rhetoric was once strongly anti-Communist, when actually in power it “sided with the post-Communists”.
The Deputy Speaker and one of the leaders of the right-wing Nationalist Party, Krzysztof Bosak, was more critical of Tusk’s remarks.
He claimed the PM was engaged in a “PR exercise” and criticised him for failing to produce an “updated Polish defence doctrine” and simply concentrating on promising the spending of “round sums”.
Bosak was also sceptical about promises of European funding and said that “no serious country does not make strategic projects dependent on European finance”.
“European money can only be used to supplement national spending.”
Former chief of Polish special forces (GROM) general Roman Polko told portal Onet.pl on March 7 that he feared that Tusk’s announcements lacked substance and failed to reflect the problems facing Poland’s military.
Those, he said, included the fact that the army had recently been expected to help with combating floods and patrolling the country’s borders, neither of which were its original functions.
Polko also felt that the infrastructure needed to train millions of men was not there and that he feared the quality of the training that might be offered could be substandard. “Some men will come, have uniforms fitted, have soup and someone will scream at them,” he said.
Military analyst dr Marek Kozubel told portal Interia.pl he felt Tusk had little choice but to propose mass training, given he could not bring back conscription because, he said, that would be “used by Russia to claim Poland wanted war and might also cause panic at home”.
“Polish society, unlike that of Ukraine’s before the Russian invasion in 2022, is not ready for war,” he insisted.
“Reserves are thin on the ground and based on middle-aged men with no back-up from the younger generation.”
International relations expert Witold Sokała told daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna Tusk had said “less than I would have expected”.
“What was missing was a plan and timetable for rearmament and what exactly we would do if our current security guarantees cannot any longer be relied on.”
Sokała also said he felt that the Eastern flank of NATO had a huge problem with being able to defend itself without active US involvement.
Therefore, he added, the countries involved had to do everything they possibly could to keep the alliance with the US alive.
